A World of “Fake” Men

Let’s start with a riddle
A car containing a father and his teenage son failed to make a curve and hit a tree. The father was killed instantly, but his son was severely injured and was taken to the city’s hospital and immediately wheeled into an operating room. The trauma surgeon on call raised the sheet on the boy’s face and exclaimed: “This is my son! I can’t operate on him!” How can that be?

I was going to write a column about a “real” fact that first-time mothers on the coasts of our country average 32 years old and first-time mothers in the Great Plains and the South average 21. Why the difference? Education and geography. Mothers on the coasts are usually college-educated liberal Democrats making good salaries and married to men who sometimes share the caregiving and breadwinning. Young mothers of the Plains and South are likely to be high school graduates who are religious fundamentalists who have been taught to value traditional gender roles. They are often pro-life and have the racial beliefs of their parents. So here we have an inequality gap developing in our society that bears some discussion. August 26 was also Women’s Equality Day, a day that has been celebrated for 45 years. Just how equal to men have women become?

Let’s go back to the riddle for a moment. What was the relationship of the trauma surgeon to the son? A step-father? A man who had adopted the teenager? A significant other person who lived with the father? How many of you thought immediately that the trauma surgeon was the teenager’s mother? If you didn’t solve the riddle immediately, you know that women are not equal to men yet. How did this inequality come to pass? Why do women feel that the only reason men shout, “Women and children first!” at a ship-sinking is to test the strength of the lifeboats before they dash by the women and jump into the seats?

Boobus Humanus Adam and long suffering Eve
We don’t know when cavemen decided they were superior to their women, but it probably started when the bigger, stronger men killed the mastodon and handed it to the women to barbecue. From the beginning I’ve always considered Adam to be kind of a dolt manipulated by a smarter Eve—but I’m not a Biblical scholar. I do know that the Adams of the world with larger muscles but smaller brains have been subjugating Eves for forever. And still are. Pastor John Kilpatrick of the Church of His Presence in Alabama led his evangelical Christians in prayer last week to protect Our Great Leader from the witches who are secretly working to take him down. I assume the witches are working for the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC. Pastor John said: “When Elijah faced Jezebel, he was facing witchcraft. What’s happening right now in America, is witchcraft’s trying to take this country over. I am not being political, but I don’t see how President Trump bears up under it. He is as strong as I’ve ever seen a man be.” Man, what a battle between the sexes! Will the smarter witches win out?

If he were alive today, I bet English writer William Golding, author of The Lord of The Flies, would bet the wo-men, the witches of our society, would win every encounter with Boobus Humanus. His novel about schoolboys marooned on a coral island described how these males turned to savagery and violence when without the advice, counsel, and leadership of wo-men. He wrote about toxic masculinity: “I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior and always have been. Whatever you give a woman, she will make it greater. If you give her sperm, she will give you a baby. If you give her a house, she will give you a home. If you give her groceries, she will give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she will give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, expect to get a ton in return!”

How have the Adams been able to control the Eves?
Men die younger and have lower IQs than women. Modern recordkeeping and tests have recorded those facts. So how have men been able to control women for eons? Well, men are physically stronger and have less social sense, so brute strength has ruled for eons. The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse outlined the problems of women in her article “The Perils Of Being A Woman Who’s Just Asking To Be Left Alone.” It’s a sad story of sexual harassment and abuse—and physical threats. She described the fear the murdered Mollie Tibbets of Iowa faced when out for a morning run. Her attacker told police he followed her, and she got frightened enough to tell him she was going to call police. He said he got angry, “blacked out,” and woke up with her body in his trunk.

Since Adam and Eve, if you believe the story, men have recorded sanctimonious statements in the Bible, justifying control over wo-men. Let’s call it Bible Sanctimony or BS. So God decides Adam needs a partner because he is lonely. He takes a rib from Adam, creates a smaller hu-man and says to the woman in Genesis 3:16: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” One can assume the man who called Mollie had learned that phrase from some religion. Perhaps he learned it from another statement by a man in Corinthians 11: “Christ is the head of every man, and a husband the head of his wife, and the head of Christ is God.” More BS.

Remember that song “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
This song sung by an arrogant professor and his colonel buddy in the musical “My Fair Lady” outlines the positive attributes of men compared to women while denigrating the few attributes of wo-men. Evidently men have learned a few things from that song, too. Hesse describes what a 53-year-old woman in New York told her about a sexual situation on a New York subway. A man kept asking her out while complimenting her breasts and butt. When she rejected his advances, he yelled at her: I’m going to f--- you up, you fat bitch!” He finally left her alone after she asked other passengers to video the incident. This man may have been raised on other lines in Corinthians (11:7-9): “For a man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man for man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.” Is this why we have so much sexual harassment, criminal attacks, and domestic violence in the world? Is this why Lot offered his virgin daughters to his arrogant visitors? Did Adam have a belly button?

Another New York woman told Hesse that when she was 12 a passerby ordered her to smile. When she didn’t, the man grabbed her by the crotch. Where did this man get the idea he could treat women this way? Was it from BS? Another woman told her of an incident in a bar when a man asked her if he could buy her a drink. When she declined, the man called her a “bitch.” Perhaps the man had read Thomas Aquinas’s evaluation of wo-men: “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to be the perfect likeness in the masculine sex: while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.” Now this is religious BS at its most pungent. Or maybe he read the lover of sex St. Augustine, who was thoroughly frightened by Eve: “What is the difference whether it is the wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman…I fail to see what use woman can be to a man, if one excludes the function of bearing children.”

Is toxic masculinity killing men?
Kali Holloway writes in her article “Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Men: The Roots of Men and Trauma”: “If we are honest with ourselves, we have long known that masculinity kills men. While social construction of femininity demands that woman be thin, beautiful…while social construction of masculinity demand that men constantly prove and reprove the very fact that they are, well, men. Both ideas are poisonous and potentially destructive, but statistically speaking, the number of addicted and afflicted men and their comparatively shorter lifespan proves masculinity is actually the more effective killer, getting the job done faster and in greater numbers. Masculinity death tolls are attributed to its more specific manifestations: alcoholism, workaholism, and violence. Even when it does not literally kill, it causes a sort of spiritual death, leaving many men traumatized, dissociated and often unknowingly depressed.” The wo-man is right. Men are killing themselves and each other in ever-increasing numbers because of those three factors.

But what are men to do when the Bible tells us that women cannot lead? Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 for a reason: “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law (?) says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church.” How about the rantings of St. Tertullian directed to women: “Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the Devil’s gateway. You are the unsealer of the forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You so easily destroyed God’s image, man. On account of your desert even the Son of God had to die.” Do people really believe this BS?

Indisputable scientific finding: women are stronger than menWo-men outlive men by an average of five years. Science says it’s because of the double XX chromosome and the hormone estrogen. It’s also because of bad mutations for men and such. Wo-men have IQs higher than men. All we need to know about the ability of women to lead is to follow the tribulations of the Vatican and the U.S. government under Trump today. Look what toxic masculinity has done to those male-led organizations. So sad. We should remember that Jesus Christ spent a lot of time with Mary, Martha, Susanna, and Mary Magdalene—and may have been killed by men because of it.

My favorite cynic Ambrose Bierce revealed a number of truthsabout us men in this rant: “Man is an animal whose chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which multiply with such rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.” Amen.